Zavaleta said it's easy for candidates to stand up at campaign events and call for a fence to seal off the border.

Indeed. Audiences at the televised debates applauded such promises.

“That plays well to the mom and pop in living rooms in Ohio and Rhode Island, but once you come south to the Texas border, it's ridiculous,” Zavaleta said.

Perry has called fencing on the border “idiocy,” and a heartless act, which irked some conservatives. But it is a position derived from his experience with the border, and if nothing else, the vast topography of the Southwest.

“He is right on track in terms of the Texas position vis a vis the border and immigration. He's been down here. He understands it. He gets it,” Zavaleta said.

A 2008 report on the construction of the 670 miles of border fencing built during the Bush administration found that costs crept to more than $7 million per mile, according to the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress.

That didn't take into account legal fees to defend the federal “takings” of private property along the border in four states.

More than 20 lawsuits were filed by Rio Grande Valley land owners alone when fencing was erected under a 2006 congressional directive.

Fencing has existed in California and Arizona for decades. But that has not stopped a proliferation of tunnels used to smuggle people and contraband.

And a pilot “virtual fence” in Arizona, using technology to replace physical barriers, was so plagued by cost overruns and inefficiencies that the Obama administration pulled the plug on the program.

Perry wants aircraft, technology, drones and “boots on the ground” to better secure the border.

The governor has attacked President Barack Obama for failing to secure the border, while proposing many of the programs under way by the current administration.

There are currently six Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, or drones, on the Southwest border, including three that patrol the skies over the Rio Grande.

There are 20,745 Border Patrol agents — 17,000 on the U.S.-Mexico border — the largest number of agents in recent U.S. history.

Perry has a standing request with the Obama administration to place 1,000 National Guardsmen along the Texas border.

And the Obama administration says the governor has the power to deploy those National Guardsmen, and pay for them with state taxpayer money, like Arizona and New Mexico have done.

Deployment of National Guardsmen is a controversial remedy, much like fences, double fences and electrified fences.

“It's all alarmist politics,” Zavaleta said, “but I think our governor is on the right track.”